ABSTRACT
After the defeat of Licinius, Emperor of the East, in 324, Constantine visited Byzantium repeatedly, formally marking out its walls on 8 November. He built a palace, erected a statue of himself with rays around his head, and according to the Chronicon Paschale dedicated the city with what appears to have been pagan sacrifice. Later he plundered pagan shrines of the Empire, transferring statues to decorate his new city. In 330 he named it Constantinople with feasting and the celebration of the first games. Eusebius paints a very different picture:
The statue of Constantine was itself a deeply ambiguous figure. It is reputed to have originally been a statue of Apollo with a portrait head of Constantine replacing that of Apollo, and the rays were said to have been the nails from Christ’s Passion. So is this the Emperor, and is he to be associated with Apollo, the Invincible Sun, or Christ-Helios? The statue was placed on top of a huge porphyry column in the Forum of Constantine, and beneath the base were relics and the palladium brought by Aeneas from Troy to Italy. On the base was the inscription: ‘O Christ, Ruler and Master of the World, to You now I dedicate this subject City, and these sceptres, and the Might of Rome, Protector, save her from all harm.’ While all this has led some to conclude that we have no reason to doubt Eusebius’ Christian interpretation, others argue that Constantine ‘did not build a conspicuously Christian city’.2 It is entirely possible that interpretation of his position was as wide open for his contemporaries as it remains for us, and it is easy to see why Constantine might have wanted it that way, ruling an Empire of diverse religious allegiances. Churches were undeniably prominent in Constantine’s building programme in his new capital, but even these are not unproblematic.
